ThinkProgress reported last week that corporate lobbyists are helping to orchestrate the anti-Obama tea party protests. These lobbying-run front groups, along with promotion help from Fox News, are organizing the tea parties by calling right-wing activists and asking them to organize. They are also coordinating conference calls among activists, writing press releases, providing sign ideas, building websites supporting the protests, and distributing talking points so that the protesters can stay on message.

The right wing and Fox News are trying to paint tomorrow’s tea party protests as an organic uprising, when they are in fact being spearheaded by high-powered business interests. Now, organizers are doling out generous financial incentives to publicize the tea parties. In a Facebook message today, Erik Telford of Americans For Prosperity told supporters, “I wanted to make you aware of an opportunity. Americans for Prosperity Foundation and Heritage Foundation have teamed up to launch the Stop Spending Our Future project, which offers four contests and $5,000 in prizes“

Here is the organizational landscape of the April 15 tea party movement, in a nutshell: three national-level conservative groups, all with slightly different agendas, are guiding it. All are quick to tell you that the movement is a bottom-up affair and that its grassroots cred is real.

Before any media covering these events accept the idea that this is just a grass roots outpouring of populist sentiment, they ought to take a look behind the curtain -- where Dick Armey is laughing and counting his cash.

Fox News host Neil Cavuto regularly claims that when he aggressively advocates for the anti-Obama “tea party” protests on air, he is simply covering them as a journalist. But Stuart Varney, Cavuto’s fill-in host, admitted this afternoon that the the network is actually promoting the right-wing protests. After telling a guest that the tea parties were in protest to President Obama’s policies, Varney closed a segment by saying, “It’s now my great duty to promote the tea parties. Here we go!”

Come on, now, Cavuto . . . Malkin . . . Beck . . . Hannity. Enough with the oh-this-is-a-non-partisan-event. Even your colleague Geraldo Rivera and Fox Regular Hater Ann Coulter admitted on Saturday night's (4/11/09) “Geraldo At Large” that this tea party deal is a movement by conservatives who are upset with Obama.